I’ve been surveying the different techniques going on around the world to buy using bottles. The technique of layering bottles in cement and building with them as bricks makes some amazing structures and can be a great way to deal with garbage. In Central America they pack them with sand. In New Mexico they leave them empty.
Here in Sabangan, we have an interesting situation. There’s lots of sand for making regular bricks. The bottle are recycled. So, is it even worth attempting? In addition, building with a full coke bottle makes an ungainly wide wall where here the climate doesn’t necessitate thermal insulation.
Well, there is however lots of trash! Where this building technique becomes trully useful is collaboratively building and putting trash to use. Engineers estimate that these bottle bricks will last 300-500 years. Thus, filling them with trash is a great way to make the trash useful, and, to get rid of it– in particular things like batteries and e-junk that poses long term ecological risks.
Above are photos of our experiments cutting the bottles (so they can be easily packed with trash) and re-sealing them, so they will last 300 years. In addition, we can reduce the length of the bottle to match with conventional building standards, to make the bricks that much more useful.
